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APA Formatting

Everything you need to know about APA formatting and setting up your essay

Types of citations

There are two types of formats for in-text citations. Each citation is written within the text of your paper in order to identify the source of the quote you used. Make sure you have a matching citation listed in your reference page with full information of source used. Citations in the APA,7th Edition follow the author-date citation system.

 

  • Parenthetical citations: the author name and publication date appear in parentheses at the end of the quote. 

This is an example of parenthetical citation (Smith, 2020).

 

If you use a direct quote, add the page number as well.

Example: (Smith, 2020, p.67)

 

  • Narrative citations: the author name is placed within the text as part of the sentence and the year of publication follows in parentheses. 

 

According to Smith(2020),this is an example of a narrative citation (p.67).

In text citations APA style

When using direct quotes, always provide the author, year, and page number of the quotation rather you use parenthetical or narrative in-text citations.

If a page number is not available use other means to identify a quotation:

  • Heading or section name 
  • Paragraph number
  • Provide heading or section name and a paragraph number
  • For audiovisual sources include a time stamp
  • For religious or classical works include name of book, chapter, verse, or line
  • For plays, cite the act, scene, and line(s)

If a work’s date of publication is unknown, use “n.d.” (which stands for “no date”) in place of a year. 

Table for APA Style Citations with Authors

According to APA style guide from the American Psychological Association, the following table shows the basic in-text citation styles:

Author type Parenthetical citation Narrative citation

One author

(Luna, 2020)

Luna (2020)

Two authors

(Salas & D’Agostino, 2020)

Salas and D’Agostino (2020)

Three or more authors

(Martin et al., 2020)

Martin et al. (2020)

Group author with abbreviation

First citation a

Subsequent citations



(National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], 2020)

(NIMH, 2020)



National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH, 2020)

NIMH (2020)

Group author without abbreviation

(Stanford University, 2020)

Stanford University (2020)

Author–Date Citation System. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/author-date

 

  • For a direct quotation, always include a full citation including the page number or other identifying information if page number is not available. Place quotation marks around the direct quotation.

 

  • If the author’s name and is not included in the text of the sentence, place the author's last name, the year of publication, and the page number in parentheses after the quotation.

 

  • For a narrative citation, put the author and year within the sentence and then place the page number or location identifiers in parentheses after the quotation. 

 

  • Put the end punctuation (period) after the closing parenthesis for citations that are at the end of a sentence​

 

  • If you are paraphrasing, you only have to include the author and year of publication in your in-text citation and may omit the page numbers, but if it helps to identify APA recommends using the page number when using a longer source.

Long quotations

When using long quotations which are more than four lines long

  • The sentence that introduces the quote, usually will end with a colon.
  • Start the quotation on a new line. The long quote is indented from the rest of the text, so it looks like a block of text.
  • Do not put quotation marks around the quote.
  • The period at the end of the quote will come before your in-text citation as opposed to after
  • Maintain double-spacing throughout, but do not add an extra blank line before or after it.
  • If a new paragraph starts within the long quote indent the first line of the new paragraph within the quotation 1/2 inch from the new margin.